John Kirkland, son of Mary Power Kirkland and John Dermont Kirkland, born in Kosciusko, MS in 1939 died at home on August 11, 2020. John earned his undergraduate degree from King College, master’s and PhD in history from Duke University where he was a Teaching Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He joined the faculty at Bucknell University in 1965, where his special interests were European and American intellectual history; he retired in 2007 as professor emeritus. He served as chair of the Bucknell History Department and was on the editorial board of Bucknell University Press and of the Human Studies Journal.
John described his life’s work as trying to understand how people make sense of their lives. He believed that one could not be a good teacher without being a lifelong learner, and he was passionate about both. He saw teaching as a collaboration with his students and his faculty colleagues, all learning together.
An insatiable learner, he built a significant and wide-ranging library covering intellectual, cultural and political history; philosophy from the Greeks to the present; critical and literary theory, and poetry. A master teacher, he was able to connect with each student generation and spent as much time with students in independent studies and advising honors theses as he did in the formal classroom.
When John retired in 2007 after 42 years of teaching at Bucknell, his colleagues collected letters to him from former students of the 60s through the 00’s. Some sent papers they’d written for him or book lists he’d given them 40 years ago and still treasured. Some wrote they had chosen to follow John in academic careers; all wrote of how he had changed their lives by pushing them harder than they’d thought possible and modeling a profound commitment to critical thinking and intellectual honesty no matter the subject or career path chosen.
When he wasn’t teaching, he loved reading, writing poetry, classical and contemporary music, tennis, golf and European travel especially to his beloved Paris.
At his core was his love for his wife and children, unconditional and unfailing. Sara, his wife of 37 years, was the love of his life and one of the people he respected most in the world. In 1964, he dedicated his dissertation to his three-year-old daughter, Kimberly, in the hope that she too would find that “intellectual activity is a moral endeavor”.
He is survived by his wife, Sara Gleaton Kirkland, daughter Kimberly Kirkland, her husband Randolph Reis, grandsons Evan and Liam Kirkland Grennon, mother-in-law Janette Gleaton, sister- and brother- in -law Lynn and Edward Leslie. His son, Erik Kirkland, died on active duty in a Marine helicopter crash in 1996. His sister, Bobbie Kate King, and his parents also pre-deceased him.
Gifts in his memory may be made to the Erik Kirkland Memorial Scholarship at Susquehanna University, c/o Development Office, 514 University Avenue, Selinsgove, PA 17870.
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